Hall of Fame: John McClane
He’s losing his hair, his wife, his two kids, and most likely his mind from all of the killing that he has done over the years. He’s probably the only person with worse luck on Christmas than Macaulay Culkin. He didn’t have the massive muscles of an Arnold Schwarzenneggar or Sly Stallone, and he couldn’t throw a spinning roundhouse kick like Van Damme. He didn’t bring the pedigree of an action star like Chuck Norris or Jackie Chan but somehow, someway, he always made due. He sweat like us and he bled like us. He made mistakes and dropped f-bombs. But I think that what made John McClane so damned likeable was that despite all the crap that he had to deal with he never lost himself. He always stood on the side of good and never compromised what got him to the show. He’s fought international terrorists, cyber-hackers, and Russian mobsters; but his biggest victory was fighting against the notion that to be a hero you needed to be able to deadlift a truck or to display your rippling abs at the drop of a hat. McClane made us think that we too, given the opportunity, could save the day and be a hero and because of that he’ll never be forgotten.
For the 15 years following the release of Die Hard, ever y single action movie became “Die Hard on a train” or “Die Hard on a boat” or the completely original “Die Hard in a mall”. Every time a movie came out with that same formula we recognized it but because it worked so well it was easy to allow it to happen over and over again. Hell, a couple of years ago they released two “Die Hard in the White House” movies within six months of one another. John McClane embodies what it means to be an underdog action hero and no matter what scenario you put him in, he’ll always entertain.
The mess of 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard will forever be known as the Rocky 5 of the John McClane saga. I would like to see John get his swan song ala Rocky Balboa or John Rambo but I don’t know if it will happen. The character of John McClane has survived so much in the past and it pains me to see him fade out because of two lackluster films and a failure by the screen writers to really “get” why McClane is so popular. He’s a hero, no doubt. But only because there’s no one else who can do it. We proudly induct John McClane into the Bulletproof Action Hall of Fame Class of 2014.
Yippee ki yay motherfu**er!
